


Radical Vulnerability

by kenwaylights



Category: BioShock, BioShock Infinite
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Booker's Sioux heritage comes into play, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Falling In Love, Father-Daughter Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Multiverse, Native American Character(s), Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, except that's the thing is that death isn't the end if you saw the post-credits scene ;), look it up sometime my pals it's fascinating shit, quantum immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 21:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenwaylights/pseuds/kenwaylights
Summary: Without even knowing it, Booker DeWitt has lived a thousand lifetimes all at once. Each includes constants and variables. There is one version of Booker, somewhere out there in the multiverse, who fell in love again when he wasn't looking.Written as a trade with 8rocks/cheesydork!





	Radical Vulnerability

**Author's Note:**

  * For [8rocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/8rocks/gifts).



> This is probably one of my favourite things I've ever written, and I hope you like it as much as Nessa and I did.
> 
> By the way, the cheese wheel when you first explore Columbia is still my favourite part of the game, oh my God, I was so delighted to find it.
> 
> See if you can catch all my lyrical references! There are six of them (not including actual lyrics heard in the environment), last I counted...a few more if you squint.

There are infinitely many different outcomes across the multiverse.

_Constants and variables._

Booker DeWitt has lived a thousand lifetimes simultaneously without even knowing it.

Variables.

There are some worlds where his grief ate him alive. Some where he got into some trouble with that drink in his veins. Some where he put the bottle down and tried to heal. Some where he and God struck a deal for which he didn’t read the fine print. Some where the only way he could feel closer to God was in someone else’s bed.

Constants.

In every outcome, trouble knew his name. Sometimes he became someone else. Sometimes he let it catch up to him and greeted it like an old friend.

The strength of water can sink a man.

In one of these worlds, breathed into existence by luck or something like it, something entirely unique happened.

No life would allow his wife to stay. Some versions of him tried to make peace with that by saying that Heaven called her name. Others deemed God a scheming bastard and kept that hatred close to his heart and let it spread like a cancer. His wife couldn’t stay with him and that was that.

But there is a version of Booker, unlike all the rest, who fell in love again by chance.

 

* * *

 

The city-state of Columbia was...unbelievably bright and vibrant.

Like, holy shit, he had to sit on a bench and press the heels of his palms into his eyes for a minute after waking up in the pool.

Once Booker’s eyes had finally adjusted to the new environment — after tearing up multiple times and blinking rapidly while looking like a dog who was very offended that you only pretended to throw the toy — he stood up, shook his head aggressively and started to walk.

Once you got past the fact that it looked like a Becquerel-style overexposed photograph, it was really quite pretty. So lively. All the hustle-and-bustle of the townsfolk was interesting to watch — people prayed to the Founding Fathers, a couple flirted over the subject of oysters, some children darted through the streets in a game of tag and...a few people tried to hit on him, which was admittedly odd and uncomfortable. Even if he weren’t here strictly on business, he hadn’t flirted in… Damn, he couldn’t remember the last time he had flirted. Before he was married, probably, maybe after while his marriage was still young.

The thought gave him a pang in his chest.

But he found an entire wheel of cheese to eat, so that was something.

Sitting on the stairs leading up to the door of the café, Booker heard a kerfuffle going on around the corner. People shouting, and not about the parade or whatever else was supposed to happen soon.

He swallowed the last bite of his cheese, rose to his feet and rounded the corner in question.

What he saw caused him to cock his head and raise an eyebrow, puzzled.

A hulking, muscular man with a thick black moustache and very hairy arms who appeared to be a shopkeeper was engaged in a verbal altercation with a tiny, blonde, heavily-accented Irish woman who, judging by her apron, was his employee.

“When I took you in, we cut a deal!” the man snarled, gesturing aggressively.

“What, you pay me only slightly better than Fink would for practically running your shop _for_ you, and that means I’m supposed to let you be cruel when you’re not sitting in the back smoking the day away? No! I won’t accept that!” Her hands were on her hips and she stood her ground against a bear of a man easily two to three times her size.

“You don’t have much a choice, _Miss O’Laughlin!_ ” The way he spat the surname and honorific was more than enough indication of how much disdain he really had for this small, angry Irish woman.

Booker wondered what exactly had triggered this event.

“I’ve got a choice to stand up for someone who didn’t do anything wrong, _Mister Bartlett!_ ” the O’Laughlin woman growled with equal disgust.

“That’s it, Nessa. You’re done. I’m not dealing with your shit anymore.”

“Excuse me, Samuel, but you can’t fire me — I _quit!_ You think you’re fed up with _my_ shite? _I’m_ quite through with _yours!_ ”

“Go work for Jeremiah fucking Fink, then!” Samuel cried, a lot louder than he probably intended.

“You think that just because I’m Irish means that I’m somehow below you? Samuel, may I remind you that Italians don’t have any better a social standing than we do and you are _half-Italian?!_ ”

“Keep your fucking voice down, you little—”

It was then that Booker decided he had to step in and diffuse the situation.

“‘Scuse me,” he called. Both people turned to look at him.

“What do you want, pal?” demanded Samuel gruffly.

At the same time, Nessa asked pleasantly over her shoulder, “Can we help you, sir?”

“I, uh…” He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I was hoping you could give me directions…?”

Nessa turned around fully to face him. “Where are you trying to go?”

“I’m trying to get to Monument Island,” he said hesitantly, eyeing Samuel.

“Apron, Nessa,” the shopkeeper grumbled.

“Just a second.”

“ _Now,_ you fucking potato-eater.”

“That’s a fine-looking high horse,” Booker commented. He wasn’t sure where the sudden confidence came from, he just hoped it wouldn’t get him killed.

“Huh?” Samuel grunted, squinting at the stranger.

“What you got in the stable?” continued Booker, raising an eyebrow and smirking slightly. _Not like you’re any better than the rest of us, pal,_ he added silently. He didn’t take kindly to discrimination at all, let alone if someone was only oppressing to cover up their own insecurity of being lumped in with the oppressed.

Samuel, face turning a violent shade of red, looked about ready to explode. But he said nothing, only gestured for the apron.

She muttered some choice words under her breath as she pulled the apron off and practically threw it into his chest. “ _Vaffanculo_ ,” she hissed for good measure. _That don’t sound Gaelic to me,_ Booker thought.

When Samuel stormed back inside, Nessa met Booker halfway. He was cautious, extra-wary of the way she behaved as if she hadn’t just been discriminated against and fired. “You said you were looking for the Monument Island?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” she sighed, “I haven’t got any place to be, now, so I might as well walk you. It’s a bit of a ways from here.”

“How far, exactly?”

“Well you’ve got to make your way through the raffle and fair first, and that’s an ordeal every year. C’mon, if we start walking now we can probably get there ahead of the crowd.”

Booker blinked, thrown off, but followed her anyway.

The pair walked in silence for a few blocks, then he cleared his throat. “What happened back there, anyway?”

“What? You mean with Samuel?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Ohh…” She clicked her tongue in annoyance, arms crossed over her chest as she walked. “Samuel Bartlett met me last year when my parents passed away. I was looking for work anywhere _but_ Fink Manufacturing, Sam needed someone to manage the shop while he was busy flirting his way around town in search of a wife or a good fuck — whichever came first — and he scooped me up off the streets and put me to work. Only reason the pay was better than what Fink would give is ‘cause Sam actually paid me in money whereas Fink pays in certificates or something that’s only valid at places he owns or whatever. Anyway, Sam thinks he’s all high and mighty just ‘cause he’s only _half_ -Italian and is a businessman, so he’s only a step above the rest of us downtrodden folks, or whatever you wanna call us — the Irish, the Black, the Italians, the Jews, the Natives, anybody who’s not white or not the right kind of white for Columbians. Or poor. They don’t like poor people either. And today, after he came back from smoking out the back door, he saw me talking politely with a Black man — my neighbour — who stopped by to ask if I could help his wife after work ‘cause she’s got a baby on the way and is having a hard time keeping up with the other two _and_ her housekeeping chores, and I said of course I would, but apparently I’m too chatty for Sam’s tastes these days.” She sighed again, a bit more upset this time. “I tell ya, it didn’t used to be that way. Ah, well, I guess it was a long time comin’ anyway.”

“Were you friends before?”

“I wouldn’t have called us _friends,_ per se, but we were _friendly._ He was nice to me at first ‘cause he related to us, just didn’t want anybody knowing about his mam. I mean, she died when he was young, and his dad’s people were British, so it’s not like it’s obvious, but… I dunno. As time went on, he started having some kinda superiority complex over the rest of us. Acting like us Shantytown folks were so far beneath him.” She unfolded her arms to get a better look at the stranger. “So! Where ya from?”

“New York.”

“New York!” she echoed in wonder. “So you’re from down below then. What’s it like?”

“You’ve never been?”

“‘Course I have, I’m too old to have been born here. But I only lived down there for a little under a year before my family came here. Before that, Ireland, as I’m sure you already guessed,” she added with a sheepish grin.

“Heh.” Booker considered what to say about the surface world. “Well, it’s not this bright.” No, he still wasn’t over it.

Nessa laughed. “I suppose being this high up will make things much brighter! What’s New York like these days?”

Truth be told, he couldn’t remember much. Well, nothing noteworthy, anyway. He’d spent too many years either in a drunken stupor or suffering from a hangover and waiting for another fix. “Gloomy,” he answered finally, “and loud.”

Nessa hummed thoughtfully. “What brought you to Columbia?”

“Work.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Private investigator.”

“Oooh.” She halted suddenly. “I’m sorry, I just realised I never asked your name!”

“Hmph,” he exhaled in slight amusement. “Booker DeWitt.”

“Nice to meet you, Booker.” She offered a handshake. “Nessa O’Laughlin.”

“Nice to meet you, too.” He did shake her hand, his grip firm out of habit. It didn’t appear to faze her.

“What got you into private investigation?” asked Nessa, beginning to walk again.

“Used to be a Pinkerton,” he answered honestly, though a bit curtly, “and before that, a soldier.”

“Must be an exciting life you lead.” She realised, then, that that sounded a bit impolite. “I didn’t mean to say that war is fun.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“What’d you think of having to be baptised before you were allowed to enter? I thought it was weird. And kind of scary. Is it still the blind preacher who dunks you?”

“Still the blind preacher, yes. Can’t say I’m a fan.”

She continued chatting him up as she guided him to the fair and he kept giving her short answers. Booker wasn’t here to make friends.

She left him before entering the fairgrounds. “And this is where I leave you,” she announced. “I’d keep going, but it’s not exactly safe for someone like me, and even if it were, it’s… Well, it’s not exactly an enjoyable event, in my opinion. But I hope you find whatever it is you’re lookin’ for. See you around?”

“Maybe so.”

 

* * *

 

Elizabeth drew Booker’s attention to a bar called the Graveyard Shift as they entered Shantytown. He figured it couldn’t hurt to have a looksee, especially since he was starting to run low on Salts and he could really use something to eat.

The people inside were seated at a long table, drinking whiskey and depressedly shooting the shit. They were so sickly-looking and emaciated, Booker heard Elizabeth gasp sharply behind him.

A song was playing on the radio, something about “tainted love.” A couple of people sounded like they were singing along.

 _“Don’t touch me, please!_ _I cannot stand the way you tease!_ _I love you though you hurt me so!_ _Now I’m gonna pack my things and go…”_

The locals turned to stare at him as the door swung shut loudly behind Elizabeth. A few murmured distrustfully to one another, but one recognisable voice piped up, “Booker!”

His brows furrowed. “Nessa?”

“You do remember me!” she sang as she stood to greet him. “Who’s your friend?”

“Elizabeth,” the girl introduced herself. “How do you do?”

“Well, I’d say I’m doing just fine, all things considered,” Nessa chuckled weakly. “Nice to meet you, girl. Was this what you were looking for the other day?” she asked Booker.

He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“Can we get you two anything? You want some of my whiskey? I can share, I don’t mind.”

A few of her cohorts shot her a look.

“They’re friends of mine, they’re alright,” she promised them.

It didn’t appear to make them any less wary.

“Are you hungry? We’ve got a few things down in the cellar, come on.”

“You work here now?”

“Yeh, I waitress when I’m not working in the factory.” There was a clear note of sadness in her voice.

Booker’s face softened. “You had to give in and go to Fink, huh?”

“I did,” she sighed. “Horrible work, but I’ve got to put food on the table somehow. How’ve you been?”

“Busy.” Not a lie.

Elizabeth wandered up ahead, keen eye scouting for anything that may be useful. She wondered how Booker knew the Shantytown woman, but she wasn’t going to ask right in front of her. That would be rude.

“So what’s with the girl?” Nessa whispered.

“I was sent to retrieve her,” Booker muttered back. “Long story, not entirely sure on all the details, but somebody really wants her back.”

“Huh.”

“Hi there!” Elizabeth said softly near the base of the stairs.

Booker picked up the pace to keep an eye on his charge.

She had found a frightened, hungry child hiding under the stairs who, at her greeting, tried to hide from her.

“Oh no,” Elizabeth murmured. “Poor thing, you don’t have to be scared.”

The child squeaked words that were not English, but they caught Booker’s ears. “ _What do you want?_ ”

He wracked his brain to formulate a sentence. “ _We won’t hurt you._ ”

A tiny head peeked out from under the stairs. Dark eyes stared at him, squinting. “ _How do you understand me?_ ”

“Booker?” Elizabeth asked, somewhat alarmed that she didn’t know what was happening.

The little boy squinted more fiercely, sizing him up. “ _White men don’t speak Sioux._ ”

“ _My_ , uh…” Booker cleared his throat and tried to figure out how to explain it to a child that age. “ _My mother was half-Sioux._ ”

The boy crept out from his hiding place, but made no effort to stand. Booker realised he was missing a leg.

“Booker, what was that?” Elizabeth inquired quietly.

“He’s Sioux,” he answered simply with a shrug.

“And you speak his language?” She was remembering the Wounded Knee exhibit at the Hall of Heroes and how Booker’s eyes had clouded over and his breathing pattern had become dysregulated when Slate started screaming about their war stories.

Fuck, he hadn’t talked about this for so long. The last person he had told was Annabelle, but before that — especially during the war — he’d kept it a secret out of shame. “My mother, um… I’m a quarter-Sioux.”

Elizabeth breathed a nearly-inaudible “oh” — she connected the dots. He had killed his own people. Nessa blinked in surprise, though she didn’t understand the young girl’s reaction.

“Booker, look, a guitar,” said Elizabeth, swiftly changing the subject and pointing behind him. “Oh, I wish I knew how to play. It might dispel some of the gloom.”

Booker turned, picked up the instrument and sat in the chair it had been leaning against before. He strummed as a test — it was in tune. He had no particular song in mind, just let his fingers do as they pleased. They fell into an old habit without him even realising.

Elizabeth recognised the song and raised her voice just enough to be heard by the others in the room. “ _Will the circle be unbroken by and by, by and by? Is a better home awaiting in the sky, in the sky…?_ ” She handed an orange to the little boy, who took it and crawled back into his hiding spot to eat.

“So you’re a private investigator, you speak Sioux and you play guitar,” Nessa mused aloud as the trio returned upstairs. “What can’t you do, Booker DeWitt?”

He chuckled softly. “There’s a lot of things I can’t do.”

“Bullshit. C’mon, sit down!”

They did. Most of the people who had originally been in the bar had cleared out while the trio was downstairs, but two men — one of whom Nessa introduced as “the neighbour I told you about when we met” — and a woman.

Nessa decided to tell them all a story to raise their spirits.

“...And I told him if he didn’t like it, he shouldn’t be marrying me then, and that was that,” she concluded.

“Good for you for sticking up for yourself,” Elizabeth commented with a smile.

“Thanks. What about you, Booker, y’ever been married?”

“Mhmm.”

“Still?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“My wife died giving birth.”

“Oh…”

Neither woman bothered to ask what happened to the child. That was fine, he really didn’t want to talk about it. He wasn’t a father anymore anyway. There was no reason to talk about the past if it had no impact on the present.

Nessa offered him her bottle of whiskey off the table. “Want a sip?”

His chest tightened. He really shouldn’t. He always got in trouble when alcohol was involved. “Yeah, why not. Thanks.”

A mouthful couldn’t hurt too much.

Could it?

 

* * *

 

“Can we stop and rest for the night? I’m exhausted,” mumbled Elizabeth about an hour later.

Booker hesitated. He would have preferred to keep moving and get the whole Chen Lin thing over with already, and they had already wasted enough time at the Graveyard Shift, but Elizabeth took priority. “Yeah, alright.”

“We’ll find a place to stay.”

Nessa’s brows furrowed. “Don’t worry about it, you can just stay with me for the night.”

“Are you sure?”

“‘Course. It’s not much but it’s a roof over the head and a shelter from the wind and I’ve still got my parents’ mattress, one of you can have that and the other can take mine and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Booker objected.

“Nonsense! I insist.”

Nessa’s home was a pitifully tiny apartment not unlike Booker’s back in New York; it had one main room and then two smaller rooms off to the side, one of which was a bathroom. Considering the way most of the folks lived in Shantytown, though, it was a hell of a lot better.

Both mattresses were flat on the ground, head ends pushed up against the back wall beneath a single window.

Booker went round and round with Nessa, each of them trying to out-polite the other with regards to the extra bed.

He won with “I’m going to stay up and keep watch.”

She was grumpy about it, but didn’t let it turn her mean.

Elizabeth was out like a light almost instantly. _Poor kid,_ thought Booker with an affectionate chuckle. _Too much excitement already._

Nessa curled up on her bed, watching Booker as he sat between the two mattresses with his back and head leaned against the wall, legs curved up and arms resting on his knees. He was gone with his thoughts, she could see it in his glazed-over eyes. She propped her head up with her arm. “What are you thinking about?” she asked barely above a whisper.

“My past,” he confessed in a mumble.

“What of it?”

“I’ve...got a lot of regrets. And they usually pop back up at night.”

“Is that why you look like ya haven’t slept in twenty years?”

“Twenty-two,” he corrected with a tiny, humourless ghost of a smile, turning his neck to look at her.

She had meant it as a slight exaggeration. She hadn’t expected to lowball him.

“I went into the Army when I was 16. Did some things I’m not proud of. Set off a chain reaction that fucked up my whole life. And here I am now, bringing a girl to some people who promised to wipe out my gambling debts.” If it were anyone else, he would have scoffed. All he could do was hate himself for what he’d done to land himself where he was.

“Everybody fucks up their life at least once. No way of getting around it, really. It’s just people in higher positions of power and people with money who can afford to manipulate their way out of it. The rest of us have to deal with the consequences.”

“You have a point.”

Silence.

“Were you ever baptised before you came to Columbia?”

“No. Almost was. Backed out at the last second.”

“Why?”

“Because it wasn’t like the second I came back up for air, God was gonna snap His fingers and absolve me. A dunk in the river wasn’t gonna do me any good. No preacher can save my soul.”

“Hm.”

“Why? Were you?”

“I mean, I was, but I asked because I know a lot of people come home from war and feel like baptism gives them a new life. Just curious, that’s all.”

“Have I offended you?”

“God, no. My parents were the religious ones, not me.” She paused. “What you said about how no preacher could save your soul…”

He cut her off. “I did some horrible things for no damn good reason.”

She tried changing the subject. “What do you think of the Vox?”

“I think Fitzroy’s on the right track. Need more people like that in the world.”

They whispered back and forth awhile longer before Nessa fell asleep and Booker lost partial consciousness.

He dreamt of strange events.

He could see his wife, Annabelle, dancing with him at their wedding. And then it was on fire, and everyone was screaming, running amok in a widespread panic.

The scene changed. It was his first day home alone with his daughter after his wife’s funeral. His in-laws pestered him to give up the baby to them, threatening to call the police over child neglect. He entered the nursery to check on her, and she was gone.

Another shift. He was back at Wounded Knee, but his wife and child were there in one of the homes he was burning.

Shift. The walls of his apartment were stained with bloody handprints. Booker’s palms were sliced open, but he knew only some of the blood was his. A mostly-empty bottle of whiskey was in one hand and he could taste the alcohol in his mouth. Written on the far wall was a threat: _DON’T DISAPPOINT US._ Voices shrieked at him from outside the door. “I’m not doing it! I already told you! Go to hell!” He ran into the nursery to find an empty crib. “No! No, no, no, I didn’t do it, I didn’t want this…! _Fuck!_ ” A softer voice was calling his name urgently, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned to look, Annabelle’s bright blue eyes welled with tears.

Booker jolted awake with a gasp.

“Y’alright?” Nessa asked. She and Elizabeth were both wide awake, staring at him. Nessa’s hand was on his shoulder, the one that had been being grabbed and shaken in his nightmare.

“I…” Booker swallowed hard. His throat was dry. “I’m fine.”

“You were talking in your sleep,” said Elizabeth.

“Was I?”

“Mhmm.” She nodded solemnly. Her eyes reminded him of Annabelle’s. They looked just like hers. His head pounded and his chest tightened. If he didn’t calm down soon, he was going to break down and cry, and that was something he preferred to do in private, if at all. “You kept calling for someone named ‘Annabelle’... Booker, that woman who attacked us at the airship station, she called me Annabelle.”

“It’s nothing. She was undercover trying to kill us. Doesn’t matter what she called you. Go back to bed.”

Elizabeth was not comforted by this, but she went back to sleep anyway. It took her a few minutes, and neither Booker nor Nessa dared breathe a word till then.

“Was Annabelle your wife?” Nessa asked in a hushed tone.

Booker breathed deeply through his nose, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. He didn’t want to see anything. Didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to _be._ “Yeah.”

“Look,” she said carefully, “I’m sure you don’t like talking about it, and I’ll bet you don’t do it often. Fact of the matter is, sometimes you’ve got to talk it out to help yourself heal. And I know I’m not the most ideal companion — just some stranger you met in a strange place — but if you want to open up, I’m all ears. Or if you need to go outside and get some air, it’s not the cleanest ‘round here, but it’s something.”

“I just…” Booker was about two seconds away from banging his head against the wall till it bled. “I’m gonna step outside, actually.”

“You want me to come with?”

“I’ll be fine.”

She waited a few minutes before going out to check on him. When she did, she caught him wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He hoped she hadn’t seen it. He didn’t like the feeling of weakness.

“Just wanted to make sure you were doing okay,” she explained. The sun was creeping up over the horizon.

He was silent for a long moment, swaying backward and forward on the balls of his feet, then choked out, “It was her birthday yesterday. Annabelle’s, I mean. And it would’ve marked a month of me being sober. I shouldn’t’ve drank whiskey.”

Nessa’s heart sank. “I didn’t mean to ruin your sobriety.”

“Not your fault. I, uh… I should’ve had better control over myself. But I don’t. And if you wouldn’t’ve given it to me, I would’ve got it some other way, sooner or later.”

She struggled to find something to say. “Y’know, Mam used to tell me that most people have a hard time sharing things that hurt them. They don’t like talking about it ‘cause it hurts ‘em all over again. She said that it’s always good to encourage people to open up ‘cause if we were all more open and honest with each other then we might be a bit happier. Said vulnerability is an act of defiance itself. So I guess my point is… Thanks for sharing that with me, Booker.”

He blinked. “You’re welcome. Thanks for...letting me talk.”

“My pleasure.”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Nessa had decided to tag along and they couldn’t get rid of her.

Not that they really wanted to anyway. Elizabeth enjoyed having another woman around, especially an older one from whom she could learn, even through the stories Nessa told. Booker found himself appreciating the company of someone closer to his own age who saw the world for what it was — although Nessa was optimistic about the future, she recognised that the current state of things...left a lot to be desired, let’s say that.

Apparently she had a lot more stories under her belt than just the one about her failed would-be marriage. Of course, people their age — Booker only being two years her senior — were bound to have a lot of tales to tell, but he certainly didn’t expect some of the ones she had...and some came with scars attached.

When it came to combat, Booker wasn’t sure what to expect of Nessa’s reaction. Elizabeth certainly hadn’t reacted well and she was still kind of angry at him.

Well, she managed to hide well and she could hold her own in hand-to-hand, and although she certainly wasn’t _fond_ of violence, she didn’t appear to be much of a stranger to it, either. Booker supposed, after the fact, that based on that plus the stories she’d told, she’d been in stickier situations than sidewalk brawls. She was, after all, a marginalised activist who clearly had no issue writing cheques her ass didn’t seem capable of cashing. (She did have a nice ass though. _Shit. I’m on duty. No room for that._ )

 

* * *

 

Nessa wouldn’t have it when Booker tried to insist that she not step into the tear with him and Elizabeth.

There really was no getting rid of her.

Part of him was painfully concerned over her safety. The other part lit up a little piece of his heart like the flame of a candle to know she’d be sticking around awhile longer.

He liked having her on the team, if you could really call it that.

The alternate Columbia was in the midst of a revolution, Daisy Fitzroy leading the Vox Populi against Comstock and his followers. People Booker had killed were reanimated and... _sick._ So sick.

Worse yet, in this world, Booker was _dead._

There were posters all over Shantytown for it. They came across one beside a child sitting atop an execution stage singing an anti-war song. Booker felt sick. His nose was bleeding. “Hard to think… Two memories in the same place.” One where he and Slate burned the Hall of Heroes to the ground, the other where he fought Slate for the Shock Jockey. He couldn’t see straight. Nessa was looking vomitous as well. Daisy announced, as the face of _The First Lady,_ that “Booker DeWitt died for this day!”

That didn’t last long.

To add insult to injury, Chen Lin and his wife were _both_ dead in this timeline.

Also, he took down a zeppelin. No big deal.

Daisy herself called them on the elevator telephone to tell him that “ _her_ ” “Booker was a hero to the cause. Ya girl went down with ya,” she added — Nessa’s face paled even further. _So in this version, she’s dead, too. “My girl,” what the fuck does_ that _mean…_

In other news, he was starting to appreciate Daisy and the Vox less and less by the goddamn minute.

His respect for her _immediately_ dropped when she held a child at gunpoint, and all that respect added to what he already had for Elizabeth when the girl took it upon herself to save the child.

Booker and Nessa were flooded with concern. Elizabeth was in shock, face, clothes and scissors all covered in blood.

“We’ve got to catch up to her,” Nessa said, “ _now._ ”

“Already on it,” Booker replied.

She grabbed a Voxophone on their way through the door. They followed Elizabeth to the airship, where she promptly locked herself in a back room.

Booker knocked. “H-hey, listen… I think you should talk to me… Elizabeth…”

His voice, Nessa noted, was so much softer and kinder — it actually went up a bit from his usual gravelly growl — when he tried to comfort Elizabeth. Almost fatherly. Nessa respected that, but his awkward ass wasn’t going to help.

“Let me give it a try. Have a listen to this...it’s from yourself,” she said, handing him the Voxophone before knocking on the door. “Hey girl… Let me help you clean yourself up, yeah?”

That...actually worked.

Booker had to listen to Martyr-Verse!Booker’s last words, though. He was filled with a strange pain he hadn’t felt since the day he stopped being a father. Like his life was completely over. In a sense, it kind of was, but at least he himself — Booker Prime — was still alive.

He pushed aside his feelings about the recording and focused on waiting for Elizabeth and Nessa to come back into the main compartment. He was worried about his girls.

Catching that thought, he blinked rapidly. _My what? They’re not mine. They’re their own people, Elizabeth goes to the people in New York and… Fuck, I don’t even know about Nessa, but I sure as hell can’t let her stay here._

There was a beat where all he could hear was his own pulse.

Then he changed the coordinates on the airship to take them to Paris, France. Just like Elizabeth had wanted.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. Nessa was standing slightly behind Elizabeth, who was dressed in new clothes that aged her dramatically, and she was sporting a much shorter haircut.

“How do you do it?” she asked him.

“How do I do what?”

“Forget. How do you wash away all the things you’ve done?”

“You don’t,” he answered honestly. “You just learn to live with it.”

The poor kid was traumatised, and Booker couldn’t help but feel somewhat at fault for that.

He met Nessa’s gaze, and she showed him nothing but sympathy, if slightly wary.

 

* * *

 

“Her relationship with the Songbird,” Nessa murmured as Elizabeth, “ _concerns_ me.”

“Yeah?” Of course, it concerned him too, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.

“I had a friend, a long, long time ago, who was in an abusive relationship. Kept telling me she hated her husband ‘cause he was so violent and controlling, but kept runnin’ back to him every time she even thought of straying.”

“What happened to her?”

“Her husband disappeared.”

Booker raised an eyebrow. “Did he now?”

“Mhmm.”

“And...you didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Swear to God I didn’t,” she promised, “but only ‘cause she made me swear not to get involved. It just worked out that way. Heard a rumour he joined the Army or somethin’. If I’d been involved, it would’ve been a great deal worse for him.”

He chuckled, having no doubt in his mind that Nessa would probably put a hit out on an abuser or something of that nature, but then regained seriousness. “So you think she didn’t mean it when she made me promise to kill her first?”

“Can’t say for sure… You wouldn’t, would you?”

“I meant what I said when I told her it won’t come to that.”

That would end up being impossible to prevent.

 

* * *

 

Even heroes cannot escape exhaustion.

Another rest stop was required after reaching Comstock House. Elizabeth wanted to run immediately to the graveyard to cut off her dead mother’s fucking hand, but it was Nessa who insisted that she rest. They found an abandoned house to stay in, locked all the doors and holed up in a room with no windows. Sleep claimed Elizabeth quicker than she would care to admit.

Nessa and Booker, though, stayed awake.

“Pardon my saying so,” she told him, “but Booker DeWitt, you are something else, and this is fucking crazy.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“I’ve done some wild shite in my day, but this? This whole thing with the jumping across space and time to alternate universes and revolutions and a darlin’ little girl who’s really not that little at all but you’re starting to love her like a daughter — and don’t you dare tell me you don’t ‘cause I can see it in your eyes — and now we’re going to a cemetery in the mornin’ to cut off Lady Annabelle Comstock’s hand and use it for a fingerprint reader? Booker, this is fucking crazy,” she repeated.

“I admit it’s probably the strangest job I’ve ever done,” he confessed.

“But I tell ya this, my good sir: if I had to go on a whirlwind adventure like this one, if that’s my destiny or fate or what-have-you… I’m glad I’m going on it with you.”

He softened. “I’m glad to have you along for the ride. I’ll be the first to admit it’d be a lot harder if I were by myself.”

“I imagine you’ve no experience co-parenting,” she said with a laugh.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he chuckled, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s pretty obvious you’ve no idea what you’re doing with her, you’re just trying to be an awkward dad but one single father can’t be good at everything. Face it, DeWitt: you _need_ me for her sake.” Her eyes glinted boastfully but with good nature.

He laughed again and mumbled, “I think I need you for my own sake.”

Her smile dropped, but she didn’t ask what he meant. It could have been a billion and one different things. No, she just took his hand and patted it gently. “For what it’s worth, you’re doing your best, and your best is a damn good job.”

“Thanks, Nessa.”

“You think her plan will actually work? Mutilating a corpse and using it to get into Comstock House?”

“That’s not the part I’m concerned about. I’m more worried about the graveyard itself and what comes after we get into the House.”

“There’s that, I suppose.” She sighed deeply. “Forgive me if I’m being too forward, but can I ask you something?”

“You just did.” He half-grinned at her.

She snorted. “Shut up. Another something.”

“I can’t stop you.”

“How long’s it been since your wife died?”

He counted. “‘Bout twenty years.”

“Ever think of…” She didn’t want to say _moving on_ because that sounded far too harsh for her liking. “Getting out there again? Maybe falling in love?”

He considered it, mulling the words over on his tongue. “I don’t have a lot of experience with romance, but I don’t think it’s something you really _think_ about. Just happens while you’re not looking.”

“Ever happened to you a second time, then?”

Booker stared at her for a long moment. “I think so.”

Nessa smiled slightly. “You just said it doesn’t involve thinking.”

“I said the act doesn’t. You don’t _think_ about falling in love. You just do. And then you think about that. And I’m not quite sure.”

“How does one become sure, then?”

“Well,” he said, breathing deeply, “there’s a lot of ways. I always said I wasn’t sure about Annabelle till I kissed her. Well, she kissed _me_ , let’s get that straight. But who kissed who didn’t really play into it. It just sparked a...a gut feeling, I guess.”

Good God, did she want to kiss him.

“How did you two end up together, anyway?”

“I met her after I got out of the Army. She was sweet, thought I was good-looking, didn’t mind that I was broken. Told me she liked me just as I was. We fooled around for a few months and, ah…” He laughed at the memory, raising a suggestive eyebrow as he leaned down to tell her, “It was a shotgun wedding.”

“Oh my.”

“I know. But we were happy. For a little while.”

“You really loved her.”

“I did.”

“You were only, what, 17? 18?”

“18, yep.”

“First love?”

“That she was.” Booker shook his head. “Enough about me. Tell me about your misadventures in love.”

“Oh, I already told you,” Nessa protested. “I was just evening the score!”

“You can’t tell me your only love story was when you were 27.”

“It wasn’t! I’ve had men chasin’ after me before and after.”

“Alright, I’m curious: was one of them Samuel Bartlett?”

She cackled. “You bet your ass.”

His eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Just before he hired me!”

“No! I thought you were going to tell me no!”

“Nope! Sam tried to pick me up! That’s how we met was at a bar while he was prowlin’ for someone to either bed, marry or both. Wasn’t the Graveyard Shift, he never stepped foot in Shantytown, but he comes up to me as I’m trying to get the bartender to gimme a drink, he says…” She paused to switch into her ‘Sam voice.’ “‘Make this lady a drink,’ and the barkeep does it reluctantly, and Sam says to me, ‘What’s a fine young thing such as yourself doin’ in a place like this?’ And I says it’s far from a dump, I’m not sure what you mean. So he asks, ‘How’d you like to come home with me tonight? I’ll show you a real good time.’ And I tell him I may be lookin’ for a job but not that kind of job, and his flirting could really use some work, and… Quite frankly, I think that was his first time trying to flirt, so he took it in stride and offered me a job instead.”

“He ever find a wife?”

“Of course not. He’s disgusting and I’ll bet any amount of money he tastes like cigarette ash.”

“I’d believe that.”

“If we make it out of this alive, Booker, you and I ought to sit and chat more often.”

“You’re going to leave Columbia regularly just to come visit me?”

“Well, I sort of figured I’d be coming to live down on the surface with you. I’d love to go back to New York… N-not that I expected to be moving in with you or anything.”

“Hey, if you don’t mind living with a severely depressed alcoholic PI, I don’t mind living with a rowdy little Irish woman with more stories than she can count on both hands.” He meant it.

“You haven’t even known me for a full week.”

“I like to think I have mostly-good judge of character. Besides, I enjoy your company. And hey, let’s face it: you almost die alongside somebody, you might as well be bound for life, for better or worse.”

“You...make a good point.”

“And there’s, um… There’s one other thing.”

“What might that be?”

“This.” He leaned down to kiss her, one hand cradling her face by the jaw. She was taken by surprise, but pleasantly so. They only stuck like that for a hot second, but it felt like a whole lot longer.

“I think that answers my question,” he mused with a dazed half-smile, possibly more to himself than to her. Even if he wasn’t all the way there yet...he could fall in love with someone like her.

 

* * *

 

Nessa stuck with Booker and Elizabeth through thick and thin till the very end. She filled in for Elizabeth when the Songbird stole her back, she accompanied Booker on his mission to rescue his may-as-well-be daughter, she was there when they plunged underwater and watched the Songbird make peace with death and she was there when they all realised that Booker, in some of his lifetimes, became Zachary Comstock. Stole his own daughter from another dimension, and that daughter was Elizabeth, originally named Anna. Anna DeWitt. AD. Just like the scar on the back of his hand. All this time Nessa had thought it was for his late wife, but no, it was for his little girl, the one he was sent to rescue after nineteen years of grief.

And she was there when they came to the conclusion that the only solution was to drown Booker in the river.

She kissed him hard in desperation just before two of the alternate Elizabeths grabbed each of his arms.

“Don’t forget me,” he whispered, as close to an “I love you” as he would ever get the chance to say again, just before being dunked under the water.

It all went black after a minute of instinctive struggling.

The other Elizabeths faded, leaving only the Prime Elizabeth with Nessa.

Both women stood in silence before they allowed the sorrow to consume them.

 

* * *

 

Booker DeWitt awakens at his desk with a jolt to the sound of a lullaby in the next room. A baby is crying. “Anna?” he asks desperately as he twists the doorknob and enters. “Anna, is that you?”

His daughter is safe and sound. He picks her up, the brilliant eyes she received from her mother staring up at him, then returns to the main room to lean against his desk.

There is a knock at the front door.

“Hello? Hello, is anybody in there? Should I just come back later?”

The voice is familiar but he can’t place it.

“It’s open,” he calls to the stranger on the other side of the door.

A small woman about his own age enters. “I saw your advert in the paper, and I was hoping you might be able to help me wi— Oh.”

The second she locks eyes with him, _something_ falls into place in each of their minds. Neither is sure what, but it’s something, and it feels important.

“Hi,” he says, smiling and extending his free hand to the woman. “Booker DeWitt, private investigator.”

“Nessa O’Laughlin. Pleased to meet you. And who’s this?”

“This would be my daughter, Anna.” He is nothing if not a proud father.

“Oh, she’s too cute!”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Booker takes his daughter back to her nursery and places her in her crib once more. Returning to the office, he takes a seat at his desk and gestures for Nessa to do the same on the opposite side. “Now, what can I do for you, Nessa?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very proud of that ending. You have no idea.
> 
> Also, "vaffanculo" is basically "fuck yourself" in Italian, and I only know that because of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Mostly-obvious lyrics referenced:  
> 1\. "Got in some trouble with that drink in my veins" from "Alone" by Halsey  
> 2\. "The strength of water can sink a man" from "Take Us Back" by Alela Diane (The Walking Dead: the Game OST)  
> 3\. "Heaven called your name" from "Amelia" by Tonight Alive  
> 4\. "That's a fine-looking high horse. What you got in the stable?" from "Take Me to Church" by Hozier  
> 5\. "Won't do me no good washing in the river. Can't no preacher man save my soul" from "Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars (modified to "A dunk in the river wasn't gonna do me any good. No preacher can save my soul")  
> 6\. "I could be in love with someone like you" from "Shiksa Goddess" and "Nobody Needs to Know" off the soundtrack of The Last Five Years (modified to "he could fall in love with someone like her")


End file.
